


all is (not) lost

by ruins



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Brief mention of Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, Gen, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 01:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruins/pseuds/ruins
Summary: The manufactured tragedy of Colonel Tungsteena Zarpedon.





	all is (not) lost

**Author's Note:**

> as always, dedicated to key for putting up with my occasional idea spam

Zarpedon knows she is going to die.

She lost many good soldiers when the world came crashing down on them. A part of her regrets not being able to trade her life for any one of theirs. Dahl abandoned her Legion, but she will not.

(Hopeless. Hopeless. Elpis will be their tomb.)

They're running low on supplies. They have a week's worth of food at most, and the thought of cannibalizing their fallen darkens her mood. A strategic time for the creatures to reveal themselves, with the Legion weak and on the cusp of starvation. Zarpedon can appreciate the maneuver.

The alien beckons her. Maybe it's a side effect of the strange vapors they've all been breathing, but Zarpedon swears she can feel it pulling at her mind. _Come and see._

She only has her life left to lose.

She follows.

* * *

She doubts. 

Blessed or cursed by the knowledge of the Vault, her mind is still military. Zarpedon watches as the best of her unit metamorphose into something alien. Something divine. They remain tranquil, as if drugged.

This vigil is her choice, but she wonders.

They are all well fed and kept. Everything is peaceful. The Legion takes to its duty of protecting the Vault – protecting the _universe_ – with unmatched devotion. Yet something gnaws at her, an unease with teeth so dull it can't break skin.

Zarpedon thinks of the Crackening. They all breathe easier now than in those first harrowing days of entombment.

The Watcher drifts past, as if sensing her thoughts, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Dispelling her doubt. Steeling her resolve.

Her actions protect the universe and therefore they protect Brittania.

(She finds herself thinking less and less of her daughter.)

* * *

The Watcher says nothing as she executes the Hyperion survey team. They pleaded for their lives even as Zarpedon leveled her pistol. She's killed many in her life, civilian and soldier alike. This was a joyless task. 

(She doesn't ask how or why the survey team was allowed to penetrate this deep unharmed by the Guardians.)

The Vault on Pandora has opened. This survey team is only the beginning, more will follow. If not Hyperion, then Atlas or some other company with too much time and money to spend chasing after things which should never be in human hands. She and her Legion will not be enough to stem the oncoming tide.

Helios. The survey team mentioned a space station armed with a weapon made from the beast that emerged from Pandora's Vault.

Elpis' Vault is buried deep. Her Legion lacks the tools necessary to destroy it from within. That weapon, a laser from the doomed survey team's description, could be the firepower they need. Destruction is the only way to keep the Vault safe. The aftermath would be catastrophic: the end of all life on Elpis, and most of Pandora. Still, the sacred vow that's guided her life for the past four years sings in her head, clear and unwavering: _the Vault must never fall into human hands._

That was the only thing that mattered. If she must destroy two worlds, so be it.

Zarpedon condemns them to death.

**Author's Note:**

> morally questionable aliens with dubious motives are my jam


End file.
